PLYMOUTH — The parent company of Bryn Mawr Trust Company in Lower Merion announced Monday it will acquire Plymouth Meeting-based Continental Bank Holdings, Inc. for about $109 million.

“We are pleased to join forces with Bryn Mawr Trust, a premiere Pennsylvania bank franchise,” said W. Kirk Wycoff, the board chairman of Continental, in a press release. “We believe that the addition of our bank platform, with the strong demographics in our market area, will benefit shareholders, customers, employees and the communities we serve. We are excited about the potential represented by our combined operations and look forward to combining with Bryn Mawr Trust.”

The bank purchase expands Bryn Mawr’s bank network in Montgomery, Chester and western Philadelphia counties by adding 10 branches, about $398 million in loans and $469 million in deposits.

“We’ve been in the acquisition mode for the past six years. We have purchased three banks and three wealth businesses (a trust company) in the past five years,” said Ted Peters, the chairman and CEO of Bryn Mawr Bank Corp., in a telephone interview. “The combined bank will have 29 full-service offices, seven mini branches in life care communities and more than 525 employees.”

Advertisement

Peters said the purchase will be finalized after government review and approvals in November or December.

“We have duplicate branches in Conshohocken and Lower Merion,” Peters said. “We’re looking at that right now.”

H. Wayne Griest, the current president and CEO of Continental Bank, “will continue as president and CEO until the closing but it has not been decided what his role will be with the organization,” Peters said.

W. Kirk Wycoff, the board chairman of Continental Bank, may become a board member of the expanded, Bryn Mawr Trust Co. board.

“Continental Bank will give us a list of prospective board members from their board and we will pick two of them,” Peters said. “Wycoff is a co-owner of Patriot Partners in Philadelphia.”

Griest said in a telephone interview that decisions about closing branch offices “will be determined over time. Bryn Mawr has a good track record of people joining them. We have nearly 100 employees.”

Griest said the purchase negotiations had happened “over the past two months. Both boards approved the purchase in the last two weeks.”

Details of the transaction are at www.bmtc.com.

“We’re very excited about this purchase. We have a big wealth business that is $7.5 billion and we are very big on trusts and estate planning,” Peters said. “We want to distribute our wealth services into their market.”

Peters said in a press release the purchase would help Bryn Mawr Trust Co. “reach $3 billion in banking assets by the end of 2014. The broader range of services we offer, particularly wealth management and private banking for example, will be a big plus for many of our new clients.”